The present invention relates generally to a method and system for securing an infrastructure component such as a pipeline. More particularly, the present invention relates to a method and system for implementing sensor arrangements and gathering data to protect the infrastructure component against potential threats.
In recent years, considerable efforts have been made to secure components of infrastructure such as pipelines and associated oil and gas infrastructure, with financial support from both industry and government. Other examples of infrastructure components include rail lines, waterways, electrical distribution networks, water distribution networks, and so forth. Securing infrastructure components against intentional destructive attacks has been an important focus. However, certain infrastructure components also face threats from third party accidental excavation damages, for example, damage from backhoes or from farmers plowing fields with large machinery, or other machinery used in construction or excavation activities. Providing protection for infrastructures is a complicated task because many components are extremely large and easily accessible.
Traditionally, responses to threats against such infrastructure components have been mostly reactive, mainly because of the enormous amount of resources required to safeguard such infrastructure sites. Ground and aerial patrols have been used, but such patrols have limitations of timely preparedness for responding to a threat effectively. In-person patrolling is not a cost-effective solution, especially where continuous monitoring is considered desirable. Additionally, daily patrolling of pipeline resources has been estimated to be relatively ineffective in terms of actual damage prevention.
Some recent developments in automated pipeline security include the use of geophones, fiber optic cables, satellite surveillance and the like. These solutions have several limitations. One problem is that such sensing methods require highly skilled professionals and sophisticated equipment to deploy them, which limits the level of responsiveness concerned authorities can be to changing threat situations. Furthermore, the sensitivity or range of detection of such devices is highly dependent on the medium in which they are embedded. For example, fiber optic cables used for protecting pipelines must be installed below ground where signals from above ground threats are attenuated due to the air-soil impedance mismatch. In general, geophones and fiber optic cables need to be physically mounted to the monitored infrastructure, a process that tends to incur great costs and that poses great risk of damaging the monitored infrastructure. Satellite surveillance is expensive and is not feasible as a sole method for real time threat detection.
Therefore, there is a need for an improved system and method for detecting threats for components of large infrastructures such as pipelines.